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Monday, February 6, 2017

Food in Jars is hosting a year-long Mastery Challenge. My mom and I decided to join and work through each challenge together, hoping to expand not only our preserving skills, but also our recipe compendium. Too see all of our projects, click here.

I'm not a huge fan of classic marmalades. They are just so bitter. I was hoping the honey would help off set the bitterness in the honey whiskey marmalade, but it is still quite bitter. This marmalade tastes exactly like Grand Marnier in my opinion {Reminding me of my waitressing/bartending days}. I'm not a huge fan, one bite was enough for me, but everyone else seemed to enjoy it.

I REALLY like the onion marmalade. It is delicious on crackers or with cheese. It is sweet at first then hits you with a bit of heat at the end. This will definitely go into our recipe rotation.

Check out all the marmalades submitted by others in the challenge here.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Spring is here! Well, it's supposed to be... I did wake up to snow on the ground yesterday morning. But other than that, things are starting to turn green and bud around the farm. All this new (and returning) life inspired me to share some of the new things that have happened in my life over the past few months.

The first is that I cut my hair. For the first time since I defended my dissertation. In the Spring of 2014. You probably can't tell by looking at the picture, but I cut 10+ inches off.

The second is I officially made the leap from Academia to Industry. If you aren't sure what that means, let me explain. When you pursue the realm of higher education, things start to be broken up into a sort of "Us" and "Them" situation. "Us" being the academics and "Them" being the people that work outside of academics, industry. Academics stay in academia: finish your PhD, do a post-doc for a few years, find a professorship, get tenured... Industry people typically finish their PhD, may pursue a post-doc for experience, then switch from academic institutions to industry institutions (essentially any non-academic institution). I've been walking the line for a few years by consulting for industry while doing a post-doc. In January I officially switched from consultant to full-time employee and wound down my post-doc.

The third is we are getting chickens in a few weeks! We have been talking about it since before we moved to the farm, so I am super excited. Now when people ask "What type of animals are on your farm?", I have an answer. More on this later :)

Sunday, February 1, 2015

"This is [whoever] from GoDaddy, we wanted to let you know your WP hosting will expire next week"

"Oh right, I have a blog..."

Surprisingly, the GoDaddy rep. didn't try to sell me on renewing my WP hosting after I said no thanks. Good for you GoDaddy.

Anyway, that phone call reminded me of my blog and forced me to make a few quick decisions. I had decided a while ago to let the WP hosting expire. I'm clearly not spending a lot of time maintaining this blog, so why am I paying for hosting when I can get decent enough hosting for free. I had originally thought about taking the site down for now, since it is so neglected, but I was talking to my Aunt Linda and she mentioned that she enjoyed the site. She hadn't had a chance to check it out in a while and hoped it would still be there when she did have time. Talking about my blog with her re-sparked my blog interest, although I haven't had anytime to start it back up until now. So, this one's for you Aunt Linda. The blog is still alive! I backed up my entire Wordpress site and imported what I could into Blogger. You'll notice the pictures are a mess in the past posts. I may or may not get to fixing that. We'll see.

I'm not going to make any promises of consistent or even frequent postings. But I'll post when I can.

Let's play a little catch up since August 2014:

The last time we talked, I had shared a video of the farm Colin and I moved to this summer. Well, we still live at the farm. Colin is working as a sales rep in the Kitchen and Bath industry and I accepted a post-doc fellowship over at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Both of our careers are keeping us quite busy. Some of our friends have gotten engaged, we have attended a few weddings, a few more friends are pregnant, some of our friends are single and living it up... Adult life keeps marching forward faster than ever.

We celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years with our friends and family. It was the first time in 4 years that we didn't have to drive all up and down the East Coast to see as many people as possible. Moving home was a great decision for us.

It's already February 2015. We moved back east over 8 months ago. I can't believe how fast that time has flown by. Our schedule has been jam packed for those 8 months. I think our schedule may slow down a little bit now that the "WE MOVED HOME, SEE ALL THE FRIENDS" phase and holiday's are over. Here's to hoping, at least.

I hope things have been great for you (whoever still reads this blog) since the last time I posted!

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

When you move, people are always curious to see where you moved. I'm this way, I always want to see pictures. Well, today I have a tour of the farm Colin and I moved to a few months ago.

This past weekend Colin's brother, Ian, and his kids came to visit and help paint the fences. Ian also has a fancy quadcopter thing (I really have no clue about it) he brought with him, that can also take video. So, here is the video he took this weekend, doubling as an aerial tour of our farm. Hope you enjoy! :)